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Ugh, I thought I was the only one who felt this way. I hated how they ended the movie. I actually have only watched it twice (first time in theaters) and the second time I couldn't even finish it because I reminded myself of how much I hated the ending. Up until that point, it was great though.

My thoughts exactly. Most people may have read his story and thought "oh that sucks." Well, I believe it's worse. I'm not sure how well one adapts to the prison life. I see as, this man has one life and he wasted 18 years in prison, the best years of your life which never he can get back. He missed the upbringing of his children and the love from his wife or gf. I'm not sure anyone else understands and maybe niether do I. I'm 25. And I imagine this travesty would be worse for me to be in than being diagnosed with cancer. Sorry, I don't mean soften the hardship of getting cancer. I just want to express the level of how fucked up this is.

If it's anything like California, they'll garnish his wages, check his bank account once a month and if there's any money in it, take it. Also, if he doesn't pay, deny him a driver's license or any professional license he needs to make a living. They won't send him to prison but they will take any money they can find. How can a judge order child support payments to a man in prison anyway, that's what I want to know. How fucked is that?

I think I would just leave the country. The kids probably already hate me, so I could send them letters when they were older explaining things. Nothing is worth the government destroying your life twice.

I am of the opinion that people who are screwed over like this should be compensated and all bills paid or nullified. This man was falsely imprisoned for 17 years, he should receive enough compensation that he doesn't need to work for the next 17 years.

It's not like there is some sort of 24/7 magistrate to review new evidence. Once DNA test results 'come back', they guy still had to file motions to go in front of a judge. Then the evidence has to be presented and a Judge has to weigh the new evidence against the other evidence in the case.

as well as the potential for broken marriages, personal reputation totally destroyed because there will always be people who assume he was guilty anyway (no smoke without fire), career destroyed (unemployed/in jail for 17 years, that never looks good on a CV)

Who voted for that? Nobody. Nobody at all. Oh sure, some politicians no doubt voted that into law, and those politicians were voted into office, but nobody voted for those politicians with the intent that they pass a law that fucking nuts.

In the best case scenario, voters examine the politicians stance on "major issues". The deal seems to be "Alright, we'll elect you into office and let pass whatever laws you want, so long as you obey us on these particular issues..."

Representative Democracy is a scam. I don't understand how I ever believed in it.

News flash, there are TVs, movies, video games, books, and magazines in prison. It's not like the guy came stumbling out into the light like a recently unfrozen caveman to find himself dazed and bewildered by the modern world.

He's been in prison 17 years, his kids won't recognize him (and certainly have no happy memories of him), his wife has almost certainly moved on, I seriously doubt that he really has a family any more.

Even without being a father of 3, no money could make up for the time spent innocent behind bars.

So, I feel that, while it could never make up for it, the state should compensate you with enough money for you to live the rest of your life very comfortable without having to work. He should be receiving millions.

I want our generation to fix the prison system. I come from a black family who's experienced all kinds of police help, from white knights to piles of scum who refused to help my mum who was nearly beaten to death by a gangster in Detroit. People are faulty, and no government should justify this kind of behavior.

I guess it's better than the swift execution most of reddit earlier today would have given him.

I don't know if you saw the post earlier of a video where a man shot, and killed another man his son had accused of rape before he was even charged with that crime. Pretty much all the highest rated comments at the time were about how that was the right thing to do, and how that person who hadn't even been charged with the crime he was killed for yet deserved to die.

A government compensating a person who has been wrongfully incarcerated could possibly be a double edged sword. If they had to pay him, I doubt they would be as likely to let him prove that he is innocent. I'm not saying he shouldn't get compensation, hell he shouldn't have even got sent to prison in the first place. Just throwing something out to ponder over.

I see your point, and knowing human nature I definitely cannot disagree with you.

Wishful thinking, however, tells me that perhaps the compensations will make prosecutors more careful about securing the right evidence in the first place, so that fewer people get wrongfully incarcerated.

Naa, prosecutors are already insanely, mouth frothingly against exonerations in the first place.

Exoneration makes a prosecutor look very bad. Prosecutors aren't there just to put people in prison, they also make the prosecute or not judgement call. Which means if there's exonerating evidence, the prosecutor overlooked or ignored it, or didn't do the footwork to find it.

Which means, ultimately, that he/she just didn't give a crap and prosecuted whoever the cops brought to him/her.

No, no, no. You've got it all wrong. Reddit is happy to assume that the suspect is guilty without evidence when it's a man who is accused of raping a child. When it's a man who is accused of raping a woman, Reddit is just as happy to assume that the woman is a lying bitch who really wanted it and is just trying to get the guy in trouble.

Possibly because of what did happen? It looked awful for them to have convicted someone who was innocent. They're trying to save face. They're happier living their own lives under the assumption they've done nothing wrong, even if there's a chance they have.

That's all it boils down to. If a crime has been committed and they have a guy in jail for it to balance the books out they couldn't give a shit about his pleas for innocence. Denying an innocent man who knows damn well he's innocent his sure fire ticket of getting out of there for 17 years is the lowest form of punishment ever. I seriously hope this gets addressed in future, what I can't understand though is why The US doesn't have a set standard of laws across all states when it comes to this sort of thing. Esp the not getting a single penny of compensation whereas he would in other states.

I recently turned 18. In 1995, when I was 1, this man was going through complete and utter hell. While this man has been in jail, I've lost family members, earned my license, meet wonderful friends, lost wonder friends, almost graduated high school, traveled to other countries, and lived a life I would never trade. Knowing that this man was thinking everyday, for 17 years, that he did nothing wrong to deserve this; that this man had to learn the ropes in prison; that this man lived in a cut throat world, while I played Xbox, makes me feel ashamed that this man was conned out of 17 years of his life. This man lived my entire life in a prison.

Most prisoners in federal prisons make furniture or other goods for use or sale by the federal government. In privately owned prisons the work done by prisoners goes directly to cutting the bottom line of the company administering the prison. It's essentially government endorsed slave labor.

You'd think, since he should never have been a prisoner, they should be on the hook for X years of back pay at no less than the minimum wage at time of release, or a comparable pay rate for the job completed, retroactive to the date of incarceration.

They have unlawfully profited from his mistreatment, and so should be forced to pay compensation for such unlawful enrichment.

That's what pisses me off the most. DA's act like a conviction rate is a free throw % and missing one hurts their future. The thought process is "This guy might be innocent, but if I'm going to be a judge soon, I gotta put him away."

I wonder why no lawsuits to make them at least pay federal minimum wages. Plus they cant take out room and board due to sharecropper and company store laws. You work or you sit in a solitary, that sounds like an exact definition of an indentured servant to me.

This is why Law & Order pisses me off so much. Our culture is so conditioned in thinking of terms of finding the bad guy, and once they do, believing it's as black and white as night and day. Can we just pretend for one second that the US court system doesn't always provide justice, and there is sometimes not an objective "right" or "wrong?"

While I agree with some of your points, I think Law & Order (the original show at least) did a fairly good job of injecting grey into what is often seen as a black and white situation. It seems the show often has ambiguous situations, whether the action itself should be criminal, whether person should be punished, or just the attorneys disagreeing on important aspects of a case.

Well it would be a tragedy for a prosecutor to lose one of his convictions. He might have to give back some of his bonus! You should stop thinking about these people stupid enough to get themselves in jail and start thinking about the people who really matter. The lawyers!

I know, right? After being so majorly screwed over, I don't see how he isn't living in constant fear. Another false charge around the corner, more bad news to send him back, etc. His freedom must seem so fragile, his future so uncertain. A lesser man, such as myself, would most likely be so wracked with anxiety I'd be afraid I'd just off myself. I can't imagine there could be much peace for him, even after being let out.

Hmm. I watched a documentary on a man arrested an put in prison for 25 years, proven innocent via The Innocence Project. In a nutshell, the main procecuter withheld statements that would've proved him innocent. The victim was given 2 mil, but the procecuter cannot be sued.

In a CJ class I'm taking currently in college we discussed this and compensation that is given to the falsely accused. My professor stated that IF any compensation is given, it is usually very little. It is usually less than $50k, and for someone that spends 10+ years in jail, that is nothing since they will have to completely rebuild their life.

Without a shadow of a doubt, I would have killed myself in that position. Just empathizing with him I feel very disgusted and sad. We can't let this happen to people, and then not even compensate them. Sorry for being a bummer; I will attempt to cheer you all up by ending this sentence with the word penis.

What the fuck is up with courts REFUSING TO USE DNA EVIDENCE TO SEE IF SOMEONE MIGHT HAVE BEEN WRONGFULLY CONVICTED? I see that SO OFTEN in articles like these. What the fuck man. In the words of Elliott Smith, "God knows why my country don't give a fuck."

The article say 27 states offer some compensation. It varies by state and generally is not very much. But the judicial system fought to keep him from getting the tests. It took 5 years for them to allow that. That in spite of the petitioning from the Innocence Project. Those 5 years should have more compensation. The detectives almost always deny a rush to judgement and claim they were thorough and were correct. Too damn much Tv making people think the system is good and fast. He had 3 kids under 6. They deserve some compensation too.

Reminds me of the guy who was wrongly in prison for ~23 years until he was exonerated after they found out the court had purposely withheld information. He was going to get like 11 mil compensation until they decided not to.

The article is about the issue of no compensation. Why are all the comments complaining about the process that had him arrested in the first place? Unfortunately, false convictions are possible. Most comments seem to assume that every false conviction is the result of lying and corruption, when it could simply be the result of confusion and coincidence. The article doesn't really offer any explanation as to what evidence convinced a jury this man was guilty - and even though it took years for an appeal for better DNA evidence to be examined to go through, the reality is that these appeals aren't all automatically considered because there simply aren't resources to consider them all. If the evidence presented back in the trial still seemed to strongly indicate him, a DNA test may have seemed an unnecessary waste of time and resources that could better have been spent elsewhere, including in trying to exonerate others whose convictions could have been less certain than his.

Should the guy be compensated? Probably. Is there any evidence that this man's conviction was the result of anything more than the unavoidable realities of any justice system? No.

I would argue that a judicial system that offers no compensation for the wrongfully incarcerated is likely to increase the rate of such mistakes. It is a perverse incentive--tax payers, district attorneys, police; everyone is less concerned with a wrongful conviction when no one (except its victim) pays for it, and that means less pressure to avoid wrongful convictions, prosecutors more likely to be overzealous, and so on.

Uh yes there is evidence. The DNA evidence that the police and prosecution had in their possession and repeatedly refused to test as outlined in the article. Malicious intent is inferred by the actions of the prosecution.

In the eyes of many uneducated jurors, they're already guilty. The fact that prosecutors and defense attorneys purposely weed out educated and informed citizens from active juries attests to the gross miscarriage of justice that we in the US adhere to.

It's really as bad as it sounds. I served my first jury duty last week. The judge took us all aside and said, "If you want to be on the jury, keep your mouth shut. They only ask questions to eliminate people, so if you answer a question, you're saying something to get you eliminated." So I sat down, shut up, and put on my most cheery look (I wanted to be picked). I've always heard that they don't like people with college degrees and especially not majors that involve critical thinking, but I really didn't think it would be that simple.

Being an engineer is the only reason I can think of they didn't pick me. I gave them no reason to other than the information I provided on the card they had us fill out. They want someone more easily manipulated.

I hate break it you guys but this happens to black people all the time but you dont hear to much about that...when it happens to a white person its a federal case.I dont think anyone should be wrongfully imprisoned and recieve no compensation...just be aware thisn't the first time